Notes on Raymond Tallis' book 'In Defence of Wonder'

Plato: "Philosophy begins in wonder" (Theaetetus)

G.K. Chesterton:  “The world will never starve for want of wonders; but only for want of wonder.”

Ray Tallis seems a lovely chap. Look at him! See: 

He also sounds quite lovely - his educated tone and bourgeois accent are posh but not annoying.
(I saw him at the Cheltenham Literature Festival, Tuesday 9th October, 2012 and bought the book after.)
He describes himself as an 'optimistic atheist and humanist'.
His theme in the book is 'articulate wonder' and from there the importance of philosophy today.

He identifies some mysteries to wonder about fairly early on:

*'Why is there something rather than nothing?' (often attributed to Leibniz)
*The fundamental stuff of the world (goes back to the earliest Greek philosophers from Thales onwards).
*The nature of living matter.
*The unity and multiplicity of consciousness
*Past, present and future
*Karl Popper said that knowledge is the 'greatest miracle of the universe'.
*The 'million-petalled flower of being here'. (Philip Larkin)
*Mathematics: "the enormous usefulness of mathematics in the natural sciences is something bordering on the mysterious and that there is no rational explanation for it." - (Eugene Wigner)

He attacks what he calls the simplistic naturalism of 'Darwinitis', though I need to read more on this part, to see how he substantiates this critique.

He talks of how some people focus on only certain kinds of thing as mysterious because they are of dubious status in our knowledge. For example, ESP. Tallis argues that ESP, even if it exists, is no more amazing than SP (i.e. ordinary sensory perception).

Why the need to write about wonder?
Because in our life there are many 'enemies of wonder', and one needs to learn to combat these.

Generally the main enemies of wonder are:
Elation
Boredom
Fear
Despair

Some are inescapable:
(certain circumstances, such as being a POW, might make wonder frivolous.)
Some honourable:
(e.g. being too busy helping others)
Some are due to the choices we make
(e.g. spending too much time online or too much time working - Tallis refers to "the habit of rush" and the "treadmill of pastimes".)

On the other hand, there are several 'friends of wonder':
Philosophy
Art
Science

Philosophy has had a hard time of it lately. What with scientists such as Lawrence Krauss and Stephen Hawking questioning its social utility, there's no WONDER (sorry) that Tallis is concerned to establish the importance of all those mysteries above. What he needs to do further is to argue how important philosophy is, rather than science, in dealing with them. I am inclined to think that those in the 'experimental philosophy' movement are not fully grasping the value that philosophy has in delineating such things as what can not be known. 'Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent' (Wittgenstein).

Thankfully, art speaks for itself, in all those thousands of words. So on to science. Tallis doesn't respond in kind by attacking science, but rather praises it, but with a slight sense of caution about its omniscience and total magisterial dominance.

Thomas Carlyle talks of "That progress of Science, which is to destroy Wonder, and in its stead substitute Mensuration and Numeration", A lot of people today still see science in that way: as somehow opposed to awe and worshipful attitudes. I am enthusiastic about promoting the social value of science, i.e. its personal benefits, and not just the way it is a method for gaining more reliable information. Scientific methodology puts us in a certain relationship with the world, which teaches us a lot of things. In the practice of science there are ethical values and virtues. Within this methodology you learn to share ideas, to work together, to respect what nature does, to pay attention to details, to be persistent, and to think laterally and creatively.

I think this aspect of Dawkins' writing is much overlooked by the general populace who don't actually read his work. When he is at his most polemic talking about atheism, you can forget that Dawkins actually has a sensitive and intelligent grasp of what science really is, and isn't merely a positivist with a hatred of metaphysics. He is at his best when he elucidates a modern biological discovery and waxes lyrical about it. Those who have lost a love of learning - perhaps in their teenage years in the drudgery of school - can be encouraged to regain their curiosity if they are taken out of their intellectual comfort zone, or if they are made aware of the frailty of their most basic presuppositions. A good scientific explanation can also do this.

"There is an anaesthetic of familiarity, a sedative of ordinariness which dulls the senses and hides the wonder of existence. For those of us not gifted in poetry, it is at least worth while from time to time making an effort to shake off the anaesthetic. What is the best way of countering the sluggish habituation brought about by our gradual crawl from babyhood? We can't actually fly to another planet. But we can recapture that sense of having just tumbled out to life on a new world by looking at our own world in unfamiliar ways." 
"The feeling of awed wonder that science can give us is one of the highest experiences of which the human psyche is capable. It is a deep aesthetic passion to rank with the finest that music and poetry can deliver." 
— Richard Dawkins (Unweaving the Rainbow: Science, Delusion and the Appetite for Wonder) 

I do thoroughly agree, although the way he writes that last paragraph, I also question whether he protests too much? After all much of the practice of science is tedious, repetitive, and frustrating. Years and years may be spent working on a misguided hypothesis, only for another to show the experiments were flawed or had already been established. A lot of science is also highly abstract and mathematical, and some goes beyond the intellect of the large part of humanity. As something of a digression, I am also reminded of his lack of 'success' with Michael Persinger's 'God Helmet' and the nagging question I was left with after reading about his findings. Which was: 'What if our different minds are simply differently constructed (either by nature or nurture or more likely both) so that some people 'get' religion and some people don't. For example, there may be some kind of difference in our temporal lobes that affects our ability to understand aspects of reality. Thus something such as spiritual experience or religious faith might be something that comes naturally to some but is a foreign mystery to others.